Class ^_!51/--£X.1' Rook ■ €2)/6 ~L ^ CoByrightN"_77^3 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. LOVE POEMS REGINALD C. ROBBINS ' ^ 1 , ■) -, . i CAMBRIDGE printeD at t\)t Hiber^iUe pre00 1903 frnr Lci-.r^Ap^Y of ir^L*«?i a.xy«. Me. 1963 COPYRIGHT 1903 BY REGINALD CHAUNCEY ROBBINS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS Page AN ANNUAL CYCLE i I-LXIX POEMS OF GNOSTICISM 73 I-XVIII AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY 93 I-XXVI PALESTINE UNVISITED .......... 121 I-XXIX A MOURNING FOR DEATH 153 I-XI A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 167 I-XXV AN ANNUAL CYCLE AN ANNUAL CYCLE I Sweet, if these Songs of Sorrow in thy soul Mean a new music to a grief long dumb, Take them for utterance and speak them forth Transfigured by the passion of thy love ! Sweet, what re-birth ! if so this verse that halts Complaining from a tongue whose only strength Is that it echoeth some sense of thee — Such shadow flame forth in the substance of Thy spirit's very power of life and light ! Then were the service splendid ; then, the voice Full choir of glory ; and the song at last Heav'n-sent, heav'n-searching : thou, in truth, its God! — LOVE POEMS II LOVE, if this verse fail of acceptance in Thy spirit's tragedy, yea, miss a life Loftily thus ennobled in thy speech, Dream it not dead, still-born out of a blank And barren volubility. But read An heart-real cry, a soul-necessity Of self-relief — it will not harm thee so And may save me from madness. There are hours. Beloved, when the agony finds act In sound which owes no tongue articulate : Groanings and spasms of the shrinking frame Unhuman, brute-like. Wilt thou blanie a song? AN ANNUAL CYCLE III MORN after morn unto these anxious eyes Brings expectation ; eve on eve descending Withdraweth opportunity : the day Done, and hope wasted : and the heart of hope Turn'd inward, wasting with the waste of days. When was the world worn vacant ? when, the worth. Wonder and beauty of all ways of work Made mockery : and daylight, a despair ? 1 have known strength and sunlight in myself Of the new day : no mockery. But now Even sorrow stales ; and only desolateness Remains : and emptiness of any aim. LOVE POEMS IV And yet, 't were blasphemy ! Lo, thou remainest ; Thou : and the thought of thee. And all my world Is wonderful, sacred because thy shrine. — There is a faith, a worship without end, A work and worth of work which meaneth thee! Such is my privilege, to love thee now In every effort : every hour of earth Directed toward and still attaining thee. Thou art not secret from this world of thee, Strange from my world which is so wholly thine ; ,Which bends all energies and every aim To one aim : as thou knowest ; and shalt know ! AN ANNUAL CYCLE I HAD not thought to have told thee. But some strength Impell'd me to the utterance, to bear The supreme splendor of the truth and thee. 1 had had vision of a vast, sweet peace In marvelous community with thee ; A life of strenuous labor wherein all Of heart and strength and soul were centred in Thy soul and strength and heart unioning all Earth and the things even beyond all earth — Made mine and thine and birthright of earth all. I had my splendid secret with the rest. — Can such truth truly be ; and cease to be ? LOVE POEMS VI I, WHO have dwelt (for thou didst find me so) In souls of most men else, did I forget Sudden the proxihood : and learn mine own ? I, was I strong to sense the personal lives Of brains and hearts not mine ; yet was so weak As to desire a life of brain and heart For mine : nor feel it in the lives of these ? Ought I but love their loves, call those mine own ; Leave thee to read and smile and nod approof ; Nor tell mine own tale — brain, heart, hope : and hell ? 'T were somewhat, to be crazed of an own grief, Ay ; and be ashen of a burning wish ! 8 AN ANNUAL CYCLE VII 1 PLEAD not, urge not. Only ; if thy soul Setteth toward sacrifice, would save a world By any martyrdom, I point a way Plain to an uttermost accomplishment. If thou wouldst enter in and be at peace Anywhere, anywise : do thou but bid me Swift to thy hand, encompassing about Thy footstep, ordering an universe To be thy benison : me, strong to serve Only by virtue of thy saving need ! I plead but for the chance that thou wilt plead. How would I save thee : praising any pain ! 9 LOVE POEMS VIII 'T IS thus it hurts — not wholly for mine own : Though that were desperate — but for thy heart, That it should feel a speechless sufferance Of ravening ; and this my suffering Be helpless to amend one throb of thine. This were the anguish — lo ! when all my soul Burns, agonizes to assuage each least Desire of thine, to see thy soul thus sick Of my same woe : that god-love uncreate Which broods, yea, broods : will not be comforted. Yet, well thou knowest what my grief must be. Haply thy pity will assuage thine own ? 10 AN ANNUAL CYCLE IX Ay, what if so this utmost sympathy Of thine for my grief, of my grief for thee, Be just such plasmic germ as quickening may Flower to a full community of joy ? Behold ! my soul is wholly thus this grief ; And thine, if I interpret thee aright. Wholly this grief : that thou in suffering Receivest in thy heart and mind and all All that is in me. I am nought beside Than love and agony : or mine or thine I know not. Canst thou then so surely know Thy suffering nowise my soul in thee ? 11 LOVE POEMS Let there be no delusion, dear ! The dawn Of friendship fades far past, and now a flame Springs in the vault, full-fraught with night and day ! Thou, art thou friend, who yieldest in thyself Light and the blossoming of all mine earth — Else outer darkness and the void ? Art thou Friend, yea, or God, who boldest in my soul The keys of heaven and hell ; o'er all my being Power of life in death — and thou alone ? Day and its night ; heaven in hell : are these Truths, save of desperate divinity ? — Love me, else end me ! There is no choice else ! 12 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XI LOVE, let the new truth utterly possess Thy soul and being ! Womanly accept Life thou createst by receiving so ! Let the sea tell thee ; and the myriad earth Say nought beside ; and sun and stars alike, Winds and the canopy of clouds be but The one all-love that thou encompassest ! Yea, where thou art is presently my soul ; And where I am is never far from thee. — Pluck thou the daisy-crown of this mid-year : Pull thou its petals wantonly : to learn, ** He loves me, loves me " : every ray the same ! 13 LOVE POEMS XII Thou spakest of recollection. But I speak An instant tragedy of thee and me. Our whole, life speaks it ; and our life is now. Let not the past dead-handed still oppress Thy patient spirit, that the grief of now . Escape thee and its rapture. Let no mood Of torpor prey upon thee, that the pain Of present passion be benumb'd in thee. Livest thou now ; and yet wilt wait to love Till only deadness shall abide, where now Is mortal need : and mortal-meant appeal } Dearest, I love thee living : not too late. 14 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XIII Thou hast desired of me that I should make This poetry of private grief for thee. And duly from the source of infinite loss Wells the new word, grateful that thou hast given The privilege of speech. And yet were mine A world-wide grief that noblier in the speech Of seer and sophist to the heart of thee Sings an earth-passion, soul and God and all, Self-sanction 'd, universal ! Such art thou, The unspoken sanctity. Shall not my song Make miracle of every soul of earth To voice thee in thy worldhood as thy Self ? 15 LOVE POEMS XIV FOR thus alone were godhead in the song, A world of tragedy made lyric too ! If nature, earth, and sky, yea, all above, Below and of the firmament conspire To sing thee and to be thy soul in mine, How noblier, love, how richlier then the song Must owe thee, thy love and thy tragedy Made mine in human nature's first and best ? ** Pilate," ^ much moved, would search thy soul : yet may not. ** Hegel," ^ discoursing of the Christhood in us Of saviorship, sings but the grace I grasp By thee. And ** Mary " ^ meets thee on the hills. 1 The personages of certain unpublished religious poems of corre- sponding titles. 16 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XV Urge me not to concentrate then a sorrow Which weeps almost from every leaf and blade And every wave of the sea at sob with it ! Leave me to brood and bear if so I may A grief which equally through every hour ** Walks with me, sitteth, yea, and lieth down Companionably," 'sooth, and comforting. What were the gain could I but banish quite This passion from the generality Of daily things ? — A world without thy soul For comfort ; and thyself so piercing sad T were past imagining. World-grief were best. 17 LOVE POEMS XVI And yet I '11 scarce admit the grief were less Subtly acute, for being distributed Through souls of many men and cognisance Of multiple philosophies. 'T were but That I, being thus less isolate, must find Solace and strength in social self-respect. What were my private self to bear alone The splendor or the agony ? What I Sole, to revere and worship thee without Support and proxihood of whom respect. Honor and dignity must needs attend ? And in their strength I bear the strongest grief. 18 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XVII Prate I of proxihood ? The thought of thee Privily comes upon me, and the world Is burn'd to one intense white heart of thee Or me, I know not ! And the sight of thee Is blood-beats, pulsings of a tiger-wrath Strong to devour thy very frame and all ! Lo! it is I, I who am wholly thou ! And it is thou who Art, thou whom I mean ! Swear by thy grief, protest by all thy gods Thou wilt not : and I swear by thy true self. Thou lovest, lovest me as I love thee — • Even with a wrath that brooks not vicarage ! 19 LOVE POEMS XVIII Sweet, I am sick with shame that I have spoke Such passionate speech : where only reverence And worship should disturb thee. I have troubled The pool of thy deep patience ; and stand mute Before the angel of thy proffer 'd peace. Yet, dwelt there ever utmost reverence And perfect worship in the soul, but spake The whole man with them ; if transfigured quite, Yet none less moved, even through hell's abyss. By heaven's own splendor ? Shall the depths lie bare And be not startled ? — Angel, but receive The passion with the worship : both, for pure. 20 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XIX Yea, for the fashion of our flesh is such That any energy refused and thwart Turns inward, preying as with lust and wrath On that which bore it. And I stand bewray'd In every act, each effort-energy Of all in the world, and only in myself Raven by mad imaginings. I fail Of any dignity or self-control And am as one unworthy of thy sight. Yet, be the angel — thou that profferest peace ! Lift me to thee and prove the worm I am. Thy seraph, whole and wonderful and high ! 21 LOVE POEMS XX Love, I would pray thy pardon too in this, That all my words are still of thee and me. Fain wouldst thou draw the discourse into dreams Indifferent, fain interpret through thy world Some child-enjoyment of the face of things. And fain would I abet thee. But we are So otherwise than children, thou and I ! There is a real- world ; and the face of things Hath soul ; and man and woman are we now, Past help. Yea, and this soul of everything. This meaning of the world's reality And manhood : this thou knowest. Child of God ! 22 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XXI I HAVE received of thee a gentlest gift Meant to be earnest of thy charity. The grace accorded is accepted so As thou intendest. Yet thy gift to me Is life itself, a daily, hourly boon Of breath to breathe, light to the eyes of me> Warmth, motion, impact to the subtlest pulse Call'd mine ; and this, such infinite charity. Given and accepted without cost for thee By godliest emanation ! How much more Shalt thou be godly, giving thy whole self To my life ! May I faint not, overwhelm 'd 1 23 LOVE POEMS XXII LOVE, I am bound to thee by love's best vow Thy celibate and priest. The daily prayer Pours ceaseless ; and the penitential psalm Chanteth thy praise to perpetuity. — What peace of conscience in the faith confess'd ! What sanctity of spirit in the calm, Clear gleam of sacrificial flame from this Thy fane ! I minist'ring am more than man If less than deity ! The altar breathes With passion of devotion. The rich rite Seems mine own soul at incense : yea, even I Myself, thy temple builded without hands ! 24 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XXIII AND, if the god absent him for awhile, What cause for consternation ? Stands not still Myself this temple, very house of him ? Lives not the faith ; shall not the rite endure Firm by a full assurance ? — Ay, some hour Shall there a light be, seen beneath the dome ; Within the fane, a voice of holiness And infinite sanctity. And all at once Fane, temple wake enraptured where the god Liveth, transfiguring, transfused of all ! Love, though the vow be the vow's sole reward, It is enough. — Love's faith is everything. 25 LOVE POEMS XXIV Why should rebuke be mine that I impute Divinity to thee and saviourship ? — Were Christ not human ? Saved He not the world ? Wherefore, art thou (of all of womankind The humanest) most like to Christ in this That thou art saviour of my life and soul. What were a God that were not I and Thou To inwardmost belief ? And what were we Did not the heart accept for very truth A mutual saviourship creator-wise ? Lies not my soul's abyss made bare to thee That thou shalt brood o' the void: and bring forth light ? 26 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XXV If ways of the world would mean thee, but the more Art thou the way, the truth and only life Of all things : yea, as God before world was : Nay, even as God Who is Himself as each, And only so is any God or world ! Shall I have fear that God will hide His face Even from Himself, Whose very nature is Self-searching ? Shall world's mutual response Of each to each be to my soul denied Whose every conscience is of thee alone ? Lo ! I will have great courage ; and this faith That God is in thee : Who will work for right. 27 LOVE POEMS XXVI Lady, it is as if thou drewest a sword Sudden to smite me, whilst that at the gleam Of the weapon (nay, but at the weapon-flash Of the swift hate within thee !) I had swoon 'd And left thee foeless : I, dead at thy feet ; Thine arm enfrustrate by the offenceless air. — And mine offence is that I love thee still After rebuffal through these life-long days. Have patience, love, awhile ; possess thy soul If but a moment. For I love thee so I will endure thine eyes ; stung by their strength Will start and stand — for thee to strike me through 28 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XXVII In measure as my faith in thee is strong Makest thou trial and default of it : Denying love, yet bidding me accept Truth of denial. For the more my love (And love or faith alike is wholly thine !), The more is love the truth of thee ; and this An error that thou offerest for belief. Believe the paradox ! At worst it were A custom and a common frailty For love to find love yet in everything. Wherefore, if love be truth of everything And thou be all — how reconcile the lie } 29 LOVE POEMS XXVIII In sooth, the untruth was not always thine. Believe, love, love sees trulier ; and thine hour Of insight hath been when thy word and deed, Speaking thy soul, portray'd no paradox Nor offer 'd any crucifix to faith ! I do believe that thou art purblind now. Since thou insistest on thy nescience. Only I ask thee, if love be but source Of every information, how thy sight. Being loveless, so assures of any truth .? Thy " Neti, Neti," can it wisely mean *M love not," if at heart thou dost not love ? 30 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XXIX Thy " Neti, Neti," this it were that seems Some formula, some funerary cult Spoke in a mystic sense of some one dead. It bears no living meaning to the ear Of one who knows the vital fact of soul. To one who knoweth thee it meaneth nought Save some bewilderment and mystery. Beloved, I toil : but nowise well-ordain'd Unto a ministry ; not girded for Any salvation. Yet not wholly waste, Haply against the hour when that I 've wrought Shall rectify itself in thy re-birth. 31 LOVE POEMS .XXX And how cease utterance, when all beside, Save utterance in toneless-tragic speech, Be utterly forbidden to my love ? For what were love which never moved its world. Was never moved, but bided, bided still A simulacrum or a vacancy. But nothing loving ? — Dear, and thus I wait. Speaking, though otherwise not troubling thee: A Memnon vocal to thy distantness. Dear, for thou scoff 'dst : '* 'T were chiefly, as I find, Thy presence that prevents. Thy screed I love ! " — I yield thee absence. Love, what now precludes ? 32 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XXXI LOVE, but mine eyes must see thee and mine ears Hear thee anew, so be it I may make sure Thou art the very woman whom I love. For she was of a perfect intimacy In me, anticipating every pain And learning every agony, untold. And she responded to each human need With voice for voice, ay, with an harmony Which heard ; and, being inspired but to restore A soul to sanity, sang from the soul. But thou within my heart art vague and blind. And canst not even answer to thy name. 33 LOVE POEMS XXXII How long, beloved, will thy heart belie Thy soul's divinity ? O love, how long ? Here be the great days of remaining youth, Whilst still is hope of some high destiny (With thee, how high a destiny indeed !) And souls should be at labor to bring forth Abiding worth. Yet here I mutely wait, Too desolate, daily incapable Of any least accomplishment ; for none Are worth the lonely labor, nor the pain Of enterprise unshared with thee. And thou ? Art thou then quite content that things are so ? 34 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XXXIII Life lieth in the hollow of thy hand To give and take ; to take unto thyself By giving utterly. And with the gift Will come new strength and new accomplishment, Doubly divine for me or thee : for both. Were it a strange and vast nobility, Could we apart, each with a separate craft. Create some splendor ? Were the tragedy Uplifting, searching, to suffice for both ? Dear, nought sufficeth, save our love, to lift Me from a mire of meanness. Shalt thou say : ** No Poet shall be moulded of my love ? '* 35 LOVE POEMS XXXIV LOVE, men have mock'd me, scoffing: ** He but dwells *' In unreality, a realm of dream *' All incommunicable ; for its stuff ** Is alien to our human sympathy." And I have patiently but laid mine hand On this or the other solid stone of earth To touch it and, if dream there truly was, Be waked out of the dream and sane with men. Yet no awakening cometh ; and these stones Seem very stone-like as I touch them, dear. Ay, no awakening ! And this world of thine, That means " I will not," scoffs there, mocking me. 36 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XXXV For, lo ! I, weary of the touch of stone In all things, put my hand forth as a man To feel thy woman-hand, and be — not waked - But healingly confirm'd in that high faith Men call a dream and alien. And my hand Stretcheth : but all that showeth of vital power Is shadow ; and the substance nowhere seen. Even as, beloved, in a blessed sleep I dream 'd in truth thou lovedst ; and mine eyes Were all one golden light and in my soul Was splendor as of morning. — Dear, I woke. The sun had risen. Forsooth, it was the day ! 37 LOVE POEMS XXXYI Strange, should I learn to laugh contemptuous On thee, that thou imaginest my love Should wither with this withering of thee ! — If, as thou sayest, mine heart did ne'er know thee, Did never feel thy fire, nor take thy truth, Nor see within thy splendor ; if mine eyes Created thine out of the night and day. Mine ears devised thy music, and my hands Held stone at parting and at greeting thee : How should thine alteration touch my love ? Strange, should thine alteration breed contempt And justify while still refuting thee ! 38 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XXXVII Out of the depths, deep as the naked soul I cry to thee : and there is none to hear. For the god sleepeth ; or adventureth A journey ; or hath never need of ears ; Or, hearing, will not hear. And still I cry. Yea, from the depths I mounting by my soul Aspire to stand before thee, that thine eyes May see and help thee hear (as the deaf use) The anguish by this agony of prayer. And I have knelt within thy very gaze Unseen as still unheard. I thank thee, dear. What worse-than-sorrow : shouldst thou hear and see ! 39 LOVE POEMS XXXVIII FOR, shouldst thou know the passion and the shame Wherethrough this soul upreacheth still to thee ; Shouldst thou but sense the Hell wherefrom I strain To touch thee and be human — in that hour Wouldst thou awake indeed and hurl me back Down, down a-howling whence I might not breathe (Like Satan whom the flame-bursts alone feed) ; So saving thy soul by true death of mine ! — Or in that hour might some new strength bestir To reach me and uphold whom only thou Canst teach salvation ? Dearest, wouldst thou learn Create mine heaven : yet nowise 'spoil thine own ? 40 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XXXIX Yea, for the soul of man is high as God If lower still than Satan. And no soul Is past salvation. And no soul that stoops To save need fear but God is stooping too. I, in and of the abyss, yet know myself Divine by thus aspiring to thee ; By thee and through thee is my conscience clean. My breast a seraph's in the sight of all. Thus, if thou stoopest, bringing with thee breath Of heaven's own spaces, shalt thou lift at last An unclean thing that shall contaminate Even thee ? Or shalt thou doubly be divine ? 41 LOVE POEMS XL So in the metaphor of many a creed We speak forth love, earth's common miracle. So with the meaning of a lover's heart I find truth in imaginings untrue Save to their faith that frees them. I, unworth To lace the latchet of thy shoe, may yet Mouth of the powers of heaven as of hell : Heaven, thy daily breathing-room ; as hell, But mine ensufferance. And I dare deny My birthright of contempt, giving earth name Which seers have known and loved life by. And borrow Assurance of the name ; and worship thee. 42 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XLI FOR thou art not **as earth's horizon- verge ** A limit " to my life and still afar. But thou art very near, more near than aught Hand toucheth or sight taketh outwardly. Ears, though they hear, are not thy dwelling-place. But as the daily, hourly intercourse Of conscienced enterprise through every act Doth mutually intropermeate Earth spirit-wise through every spirit of earth ; Even in the nearness as the verge of things, Life's outwardness that meaneth inwardly But inwardness : art thou. — What else were God ? 43 LOVE POEMS XLIl Therefore, a little absence, doth it end The power and purpose of thy soul in mine ? Though I am wrack 'd and worn, that speech with thee Would shake me as a reed ; though the heart break At every casual inference of thee In each environment nor thee nor thine — Art thou less with me that thou carest not ? Doth not my love fare forth to wing with thee Whither thou wilt, learning anew her world By sympathy in every walk of thine ? Fare the world over, shall my heaven-in-hell Attend thee : and thine omnipresence stand. 44 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XLIII Behold ! my spirit is spread with thee beyond Boundaries of the north or of the east ! Earth is as nothing to the heart of thee ! Big by thy breath's afflatus swells my soul To power, performance, yea, accomplishment Of all that stands work-worthy. And the world Seems worth the labor in the love of thee ! Set thou the trophy : and the meed I claim Art thou, the preordained of my love. State thou the terms of service : and I swear The stint completed ere thy speech shall cease. — Or state them not : and 't is to move the world ! 45 LOVE POEMS XLIV Thou sayest (withholding comfort) that thy care Must be for truth's sake — did I ask aught else ? Yea, have I sued that thou shouldst live a lie ; Or lend thee to a fraud no soul should speak Of man or woman to give comfort in it ? When did I outrage truth in learning thee ? Or tell thee false that thou shouldst fool thine ear ? Only, hast thou not heard yet ? Knowest thou not The name I call thee by that best means thee ? If thou wilt love and lend thy whole soul to it Shall not thy care, so surely comforting. Be then most surely for the sake of truth ? 46 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XLV Was it with poor excuse of easing thee One atom of thy pain that 1 profess 'd This undertaking of these songs of love ? Was there pretence that I by any mean Might stifle self to furnish voice to thee ? A sorry mummery ! Might tongue so false Be fitted to thine utterance ? Speaks the soul By any puppetry ? — Love, if the song Hath moved thee anywhither ; anywise Been ease and solace to thee ; 't is but truth That makes the miracle : my love for thee At labor in thy soul to bring forth love. 47 LOVE POEMS XLVI Dear, and perchance a whispering untoward Hath sneer 'd : '* His soul is but a voyager. '* My love to-day ; to-morrow, any heart's ** That neighbors him in his excursioning ! ** An heart so deft to snatch at any straw ** Needs no salvation else ; is skill'd to swim : " May sink — for all his outcry to my soul ! " A wanderer, indeed, and well-nigh done In this his desperate search ; an heart so used To prove straws, straws ; that any helping hand Had seem'd but mockery. — What last good chance That Thou didst never lean : to loose thine hold ! 48 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XLVII AND yet I rise beside thee and I find Thee home and haven : and belong with thee. If of the stranger and the homeless house I long have suffer'd hospitality, If of the blank sea I have still outstared Innumerable meaningless dismays To mock me with imagined peace at last ; Am not I but the wiselier skill'd to know The authentic sign, the genuine report Of sight and reason to the journey's end ? If of the world I voyage still a space Who may not dwell with thee : know I not Home ? 49 LOVE POEMS XLVIII If I in speech have been unfaithful to thee, Or misdirected any deed from thee, Neglected thee in thought or follow'd after The sweetness of another soul than thine : Forgive me ; an there be aught to forgive ! From now, no more : I vow thee ! — Were there though Blameworthiness in following thy command ? Sin, in abjuring so a God untoward Whose worship were prohibited of Him ? — Yet shall I clean me of obedience With prayer and fasting ; and be bold before thee, Fearing not thee : for all thy holiness. 50 AN ANNUAL CYCLE XLIX Yea, rather, overlook the poor pretence, Forgive the feign'd obedience to thy will. The still forsworn forswearing ! And forget That I have hidden beyond the seas and sands The rites of worship homelier-taught of thee. If a strange sun hath taken incense for thee And hymns of thee borne but a mystic name. If sweetness of thy soul but seem'd too sweet In some far hint of how thy heart might love : Ignore the self-deception. Nay, accept For faithfulness the extreme shift of life To save thy people to thy service still. 51 LOVE POEMS And thou, wouldst thou not scorn the proffer'd zeal Of one who lisp'd : ** No beauty in the world *' Nor worth is there whereon I 'd wish to look ** Nor seek to dwell with, save but thine alone ; '* I who in absolute innocence of love ** Now swear I love thee, peerless beyond all Which owe no privilege ! " ? Had he fit sense Of thee ? But rather lay I at thy feet A worship that proclaimeth every heart And soul of earth right worshipful : in thee All focuss'd and concentred, sphere in sphere Orb'd to love's universal immanence. 52 AN ANNUAL CYCLE LI FOR thus in thy dear person thou dost lead Captive the world ; affording world free life ! Thus art thou nowise comparable through Earth's length and breadth that were but earth at all By being contain'd of thee and so sustained. Therefore is meaning, reason and respect In faith and worship ; that acknowledgment Of thee creates the world, maintains it whole By the love-miracle. And any worth Declared of earth declareth but of thee The wonder and the glory. Love, wert thou Loveworthy, were thy world not worthy too ? 53 LOVE POEMS LII Therefore, to be fit mate unto thy soul, Must a man learn to love (so comprehend) All things 'soever ; that he well may know Thee by the splendor that is wholly thine. 1 from my youth have everywhere, with heart Open to understanding, sought to search The deepmost soul of things, being of faith Soul doth lie deepmost and is soul at last, 'Soe'er bewray'd and 'wilder'd. Shall I now Deny soul ? Shall I cease an infinite search Through all thy regions, that my reverence Hath proved thy godhead in the loved and known ? 54 AN ANNUAL CYCLE LIII LOVE ! for that power which only thou canst give me To toil and be not wearied ; which thy love Alone can grant — to fail nor be dismay'd ! I from my youth have toil'd and have been wearied Yea, I have ever fail'd and been dismay'd. Now hath dismay wholly got hold of me And weariness. I toil not nor attempt ; But only wait thy mercy and thy word. — Nor is it service thus to stand and wait. Therefore I most am utterly unworth Thy love when most demanding of thee love To make me godlike and fit mate for thee. 55 LOVE POEMS LIV Time was when I with firmer fortitude And some philosophy was wont to dream : '* No failure can be where the soul is strong ** To toil and takes success in work's own sake *' And needeth no results else." If I fail'd And stood dismay 'd, I laugh'd : '* 'T were but the fault *' Of this dismay. On ! with a strength the more ** Unconquerable that the touch of earth * ' Hath taught invigoration ! From the mire " Were loftier leap to flight than from that mound ! " Now that I know thine inspiration, shall The leap sink lifeless ? Shall the song be nought ? 56 AN ANNUAL CYCLE LV The singer is not other than the song ; Nor is the song, love, other stuff than love In every inference. Thou lovest not The singer ? Let it be : thou lov'st the song. What more might be desired or attain'd ? Yet, thou wilt say : " Because I am assured ** By my self-searching that I love not thee ; ** Then is thy syllogism strain'd and false, ** The logic wanting. Else, the love I feel ** Even for the song is never love like thine. — ** Pardon an heedless word. Such love I mean not." Thus from my soul is taken that it hath. 57 LOVE POEMS LVI LOVE, once again have I transgress'd the bounds Set for the speech of man unto thine ear ; Once again begg'd the benediction of Thy lips to mine. Love, canst thou still forgive ? Some can kiss lightly : not so thou ; nor \. Nought can give absolution from the sin Of such solicitation ; though thou still Forgivest, I can in no wise forgive My blasphemy. — And yet, were the prayer heard, What consecration beyond blasphemy ; What perfect absolution ! Still canst thou Save me ; yea, still absolve from every sin. 58 AN ANNUAL CYCLE LVII Call this I ask of thee no trifling boon ; But love, the greatest of all things of earth. Then, but because thy very soul is great, Will this be easy that I ask of thee, The saving of my soul. Faith, hope, I have them. *T is charity that thou alone canst give. Yet have 1 charity : for that is life ; And life is of the winter as of spring. Rouseth the year but by the year's own power Of earth-resuscitance sustain 'd of earth ? Shall my soul wait thee, when thy soul in mine Is quick-responsive to each hour of need ? 59 LOVE POEMS LVIII This miserable pleading with thy soul, Forgive it as all earth forgives the prayer Of murder'd autumn ! Could the season yield Sense to the stroke, and not in one last flash Of outraged blood betray the heart that beats Most hotly by the anguish ? If the life Stains forest-floor and cloud-rack with the hue Of martyrdom, shall blame be that the world Dies unrecanting and unreconciled ? Pray thou that thy forgiveness reach me deep, Deep as the unrelenting agony : And hearten me to die as the dropt leaf. 60 AN ANNUAL CYCLE LIX LOVE, now in autumn woods I, with thee walking, Weep the lost springtime that so sweetly brought Thee to the threshold of my soul ; and summer That saw thee consciously enshrined of it. This other season, is it fruit of those ? Are these thy woman's words and thy loved ways Which crumble and are dust beneath the feet Of any wayfarer ; which, while the light Blared and the day were torrid-parch'd without, Spread for a solace to my private soul ? Was thy care nature's, with the weeks to pass ? Shall winter rack me leafless and alone ? 61 LOVE POEMS LX Yet, would I change one word of all thy truth Hath said ; or have thee other than thou art By any subterfuge ? Must not thy soul Grow as the changes of the season 'd year ? I gaze abroad ; and mark how intimate This harshening of the forest ; how her speech Is frank if not so fair, and nature's dearth Duly reveal'd bespeaks but chastening Toward nobler birth. — Shall not my heart accept The forest-omen ; sepulchre my soul To terrible endurance, till a surge Of re-birth wake and wrap me with thy spring ? 62 AN ANNUAL CYCLE LXI I FEEL the still snows sifting over me, Shrouding the scars of earth and brooding all In crystal benediction. Over me The wroth stream stiffens and the torrent takes An immortality of moveless force ; And all things are as iron. Here some gale Lashes aloft a sleet and stinging storm ; But rives no roots from out the vise and grasp That is my spirit. If a stricken groan Gasps from the rigid sap-wood — 't is not mine. My life is ended till the year hath moved. Thou canst take up that thou alone laid'st down. 63 LOVE POEMS LXII Thus in the weak year's frenzied metaphor I face the disenchantment ; front the world With one wan yearning to be hale and free In winter's way of self-dependence still Who scarce may quicken sunward. How the rack'd And feverish spirit turns refresh 'd and firm To stand alone of frost and be of will To buffet and be busied ; brutally To do the day's insensate task and toil ! How noblest, to be mad for love of thee ; And not do madly ! How beyond all praise, To worship yet deny thee for my God ! 64 AN ANNUAL CYCLE LXIII I, WHO am daily deeper drawn within The shadow as of sin born in the blood ; Who from the blackness of self -cynicism And vile world-weariness descry thy stars ; Cry to thee : ** Yea, Lord, save thy people still ! " Should all the best and dearest, upon earth Remaining, die about me : and I live ; Should every undertaking all-wise fail As presently have fail'd me all my works : And I still labor ; L might deem me saved And thee a living God as formerly ! — But now what sign assures me that I love ? 65 LOVE POEMS LXIV 1 FEEL upon my lips a look like thine 1 had not understood till latterly. And in mine eyes (what shone in thine like love !) A searching misery : for the vacant world Is passionate and bitter ; and 1 learn Thee by the suffering so like to thine. And as 1 learn thee hour by hour, and know The desperate-sweet abysses of thy soul, Space by space with the insight waxeth loss ; Deathlike, though vital in the sympathy. For I, 1 may but breathe and be at all Only by utterly forswearing thee. 66 AN ANNUAL CYCLE LXV So hath the year come round wherein my love Did spring and blossom and send leafage forth And strike deep root in earth ; and wither with The season's withering ; and die away And lie in snow sepulchred. And the spring Is delicate over earth ; and myriad buds Push forth to feed on warmth and light : a film Of hope before the eyes, and through the air A gossamer radiance of vitality. — I see these signs, as leaves look shuddering up Out of some forest-charnel, whom the drift Thawing reveals to rot in dimness there. 67 LOVE POEMS LXVI FOR I am nothing in the round of earth. Her strength sweeps over me and surges by My soul fast buried, ay, though bare and blown As any weed-husk. If by dreaming toward The faint confusion I imagine days Of beauty and splendor still to come for earth ; If by compulsion of my sapless cells And frost-stript fibres I may fondly feel The life lost yester-year yet wonderful Elsewhere and otherwise than as I lie — 'T is all. The sun in heaven proves dark, with thee And these my seeds are barren from their birth. 68 AN ANNUAL CYCLE LXVII LOVE, even in the moment of a death That voided earth, sprang still the power of thee Insistent, vital. If world ended not With such an end, then nought that is of breath Can anywise deny thee. Could the dead Know thee, they were arisen full of life. Yet, love, the wearying, wearying-out of love ! The terrible insistency of death To take at last even the life of life And leave a gasping after vacantness ! — The void swoons in. Were I a thing of breath Twere otherwise. The dead cannot know thee. 69 LOVE POEMS LXVIII I FELT, when the stiff, simulated fate Seized on my sinews and the pulse-beats paused, Breath-labor ceased and every sense swoon 'd off, Then that I was permitted to proclaim Protest supreme at life's intolerable Indifference to intolerable death. And yet what protest so were possible ? What yielding thus to death were any cure For death's injustice ? — And the life return'd ; Lifting me chasten'd and subdued to bear The uttermost injustice love can know : Nor ask that any enter protest for me. 70 AN ANNUAL CYCLE LXIX ' Unto all souls that sorrow be my sorrow For expiation that I ever sought An happiness ; my grief beyond all grief Be unto grief a last apology ! Lo ! with what hush'd and awful penitence I, bow'd by disappointment as a cloud, Yearn to that ultimate companionship Of them that sit in darkness. And the shadow Of somewhat more than darkness bred before me Spreads gloom ; vouchsafes assurance how with them I sit me down forgiven : in the dust And ashes ashen ; reconciled with death. 71 POEMS OF GNOSTICISM POEMS OF GNOSTICISM I Beloved, it is too true I was not fit To stand before thee, saying, ** Here am I ! " The manner of my life was not as now A glad thank-offering, nor mine inmost soul (Save as thou hadst fill'd erst the vast of it !) A space of consecration. And my life (But for the truth life once belong'd to thee) Was void dispersion ; and mine energy Of soul some dispossess'd perplexedness Daily degenerating out of strength. — Nay, that some song had seem'd approved of thee But made a misery of the dream of it. 75 LOVE POEMS II Behold, I was as nothing in myself Save as I tended toward thee. And when thou Withdrewest unto thyself and didst deny My birthright of approach unto thy soul ; Forbad 'st access, and madest of my prayer Crime against reason : then each hour by hour Was my distracted motion turn'd away From my best self and substance ; that my life Was loss each hour by hour, losing earth all With thee ; my faith, my reaching out to thee But proven mine isolation : in each act Frustration of an aimless fmitude. 76 POEMS OF GNOSTICISM III FOR, as the world of old cosmology- Defined of form and motion, I 'd aspired With seeming guarantee of goal divine Through manifestation many and diverse In preordain'd succession : dreaming on A progress, an enfolding of my past In that which springeth from it presently To new ennoblement. And, like that world, Betray'd by sudden orphanage from thee I waked to degradation ; feeling each Necessitated onward ness some loss Of vital potency from what had been. 77 LOVE POEMS IV And, though in hours of insight I had known The refutation of their fault involved In any definition of a world As soulless mechanism — • how, without Mind is the mechanism but metaphor For teleology extrinsic to it ; And but by teleology of force Intrinsic to each individual fact Were mass at all mechanic in itself (Only by thee within me were I whole) — Yet for the hour was mine emotion mad With strength-dispersion in each act of me. 78 POEMS OF GNOSTICISM Yea, I had known how every least impact, Even by its wide impulse illimitable, Concludeth in the essence of each part. As it is part, the substance of the whole ; And thus alone were any whole defined. By comprehension inwardly of each By each throughout love's wisdom-universe. Love, I had known love and the logic-law Delimiting, discriminating love In constitution of the truth call'd soul : Yet, feeling not soul's self-creativeness Beyond loss, I was as one dispossess'd. 79 LOVE POEMS VI Love, in the earlier light, illusive proved, Each effort (as some flowering of faith) Seem'd concentration, each to new consent, Of all toward thee ; each, cumulative proof Anew of worth and wonder, dignity And rapture at thy ruling. And everywhere Seem'd new-won manifestation, new-defining Divinity of thee. The world had growth. Warranting, if but by the hope divine That look'd before and after, even that sense Of incompletion which the past must show. Each act seem'd victory — for all its cost. 80 POEMS OF GNOSTICISM VII AND victory, alone by costing sore. The inevitable failure to obtain Any consent from thee, the God I 'd move. Though guarantee at worst that I through thee Felt fate-reality, yet point by point Frustrated each accomplishment, debarr'd My strength from soulhood ; left me in myself Self-thwart and baffled : only in that sense Of terrible discontent yet nobler than Their pure degenerate automatism Void of all conscience of unworthiness. For my degeneracy was still — mine own. 81 LOVE POEMS VIII And therefore when at last thou didst destroy All vestige of thy loved divinity, Didst wipe from the world at a word each symbol, sign And imputation of the creed I 'd known ; Then was I fallen beneath despair at last, A soulless thing, an atom-vacancy, A maelstrom with no meaning : nought to move. Nought to be moving. And the unceasing song (For song, though shamed, remain'd to show I still Lived) was of nothing living : only death Was burden of the voice that still spake thee. And but for song had 1 been wholly dead. 82 POEMS OF GNOSTICISM IX But : with the miracle that song remain 'd Over, beyond my mere mechanic breath (That someway was an unity unknown Required of faith to make conceivable The very isolation); and with a true Development, within the thought of death. Of life the all-containing self-contained : Awoke in me wiselier the deity Of thee as of some immanence, unlike A goal beyond my striving : but attain 'd With every impact of activity, In so far forth as altering my world. 83 LOVE POEMS It were not that an immanence not I Pervadeth broadcast through an outer earth Or thee or not- thee as the chance might stand. For then wert thou else deity but of stone, Else pre-establish 'd as some truth-for-all Unvitalizing, undefined at last By any effort : hence, no truth of mine. 'T were rather that each personal intent Were ineffectual, earth were anarchism. Save for thy mutualizing unity. An unioning itself defined (thy truth Love-comprehended) by each act of me. 84 POEMS OF GNOSTICISM XI And therefore, in so far as strength might stir To some accomplishment, conserved I thee ; And, finding day by day beneath mine hand This, that, or other opportunity For action ; was I as a world sustain'd Even by the infinity which had seem'd loss, Even by the interminability of change Proceeding outward through an universe From each least impact of each part on part (Thereby made whole, my part through thee ! ) ; thereby, By being as fact infinitesimal. Not isolate but infinite, each truth. 85 LOVE POEMS XII And therefore since, without the former shame Of imperfection striving but toward thee Nor as by isolation utterly Debarr'd from thee, I learn thy saving truth As essence of my being and know thee For immanent although thou bidest apart : Therefore for thee now fit (as earth for earth's Own absolution) 'fore thy face I stand Saying : " Thou life within me, here am I !" — I was not alway so. But I have come Through orphanage from thee ; and am as one Whom fire hath purged and fear hath clarified. 86 POEMS OF GNOSTICISM XIII FOR now I dream not with the formal creeds : *' This is of thee, O God, this hint of love. ** And this, this implication of an hell, **This lovelessness is nothing of thy deed.'* Nor with the nescience of their modern cant I cry : **Heart scarce may know thee. Thou art nought ; ** Else art some mystery beyond man's sight ** Indifferent to his world." — For then were I Unfit for thee, whether in all my ways Of godlessness, or as the earlier fault That knows not God in His world-tragedy. But I, I learn thee in each hour I live. S? LOVE POEMS XIV Wherefore am I most fit to stand before thee With the unceasing prayer : " Love, here am L'* Though 1 be as the basest of the unclean (And who, in speech unto thy sanctity. Were better than blasphemer ?), must I be Nevertheless ennobled, as thy sight Is mine ; as to the pure all things are pure. Wherefore I do avow : *M am not fit." Even as this desperate passionate poor world Stands overtly unworthy of the soul Which constantly conserves and self-redeems Its loss and nescience unto absolute worth. 88 POEMS OF GNOSTICISM XV Thus too I speak the truth out unto thee As to an oracle and confessional From one whose conscience of acknowledged sin Placeth his heart in power and purity To teach thine obligation to thy world. Though I have call'd thee oracle, I prove No oracle nor any world-withdrawn Mysterious equivocality Divine. If I, by being of the earth earth, Have conscience of divinity through thine, Then must thou, to be inmostly thyself A god, have conscience of thy world in me. 89 LOVE POEMS XVI So till the end make I to thee my song And pray to thee : "Beloved, here am I " — Insistent : that this fire and fear (wherethrough I as the modern thought of men am come — Through losing God and with their god all worth Of worldhood ; and through darkness that is felt Of nescience — now anew am come to thee) That this thy world, proving divinity. May enter in and new-defme thy spirit Unto reciprocation. For without The world as thou hast made it art thou nought. - Beloved, my life is love. Be thine but so. 90 POEMS OF GNOSTICISM XVII FOR, though the tragedy of earth be still Thy meaning, and divine, though there be nought That is not of thee, yet hath earth degrees Of God-accomplishment, and earth would fain Be saved from self by self's own cognizance Of new-won consecration through thy soul. Hence, when I pray thee : *' Be thou of this world " Savior in thine own sight by entering in '* To this my tragedy of me and thee," I ask thee not some bitter sacrament ! I ask thee but to lift unto thy lips The poison-cup to find it fill'd with wine. 91 LOVE POEMS XVIIl Yea ; for, though in my bitterness of heart (Like orphan'd earth, save for sad consciousness Even of the orphanage) I seem'd to thee Deservedly an outcast from thy sight ; And though these orisons wherewith my soul Seeks rehabilitation may to thee Seem as some sophistry ; I cannot yield That I, who know myself to love thee well, When loved by thee shall show by any sign Failure of full reciprocal desert To save thee as thy service saves me now. So thy creation singeth : creating thee. 92 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY MID-OCEAN Once again call the leagues unto my soul : ** Be thou, as wave and froth of the white sea, ** No more a sufferer station'd, but a power ** Wanton as heaven blown over the earth ** Strong, saline, health-fill'd, unconfmable ** To freshen and renew and be alive ** With world's on-moving ! " Once again I take The heave and throb that proves an onward pulse And plunge of this sea-monster. And "the verge Of the east shall mean thee and the rising sun : Even as this sun that sinks now in the west With thee to slumber — while I wake and move. 95 LOVE POEMS THE GULF OF LYONS Behold ! a barrier of antiquity Thrust in between us ! For myself have pass'd The Pillars ; and am borne of this blue gulf, The Carthaginian Sea. And one long year Is blotted from my life since last I stood Before the Pillars, paused and enter'd not Butturn'd and plough'd a pathway home — to thee ! Now hath my home forsaken me. I turn, Sick though at soul ; pause not ; but enter in And feel the ancient world so near alive Without me : that within me thy loved year Drops dead. And Carthage only sails with me. 96 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY VESUVIUS Yet how the passion of earth and agony, Though issued in a thousand awful streams Of fire to shake and shatter, buried deep, A civilization ; and though sepulchring Cered dust through centuries ; spring born at last To some new purpose, some support of hope And trust in human duty. — Lo ! what dream Of peace, luxuriant serenity. Yon vineyarded Sorrento smiling, yea. On earth's avenger. Ay, and that wasp-work Call'd Pozzuoli plaster'd on the hills. And Ischia, chasten'd yet imperishable. 97 LOVE POEMS POMPEII Though, be the last prayer of mine ashen soul That none unbury what this love hath burnt ! Live the world as it will ; yea, wake my heart To laughter and dancing and earth's green anew (Mocking dead days imprison'd and the passion Sodden and cloddish that bears down upon them); Be the long years ensuing what they will Of bright vitality — mine hour is run Of faith and power and beauty. I would lie Rather choked up with dust that was a flame ; Than stir and rouse me, move and breathe about A stranger under heaven : my charr'd soul, cold ! 98 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY .ETNA Yet art thou still a spirit above all This froth and turmoil of the narrow seas Tall, angel-vestured and thine head held high, Snow-splendid unto heaven and the sun. We of the tumult and the desperate straits May pray to thee ; may, in the depth of need, Leap landward, struggling in Charybdis' swirl : And drown or not drown — were it aught to thee ? I, who in blessed hours of summer's ease Have seen thy clouds snatch 'd as by thine own hand .Bare from thine heart ; and known thee lean to me With overpowering sweetness : need I die ? LofC.. 99 LOVE POEMS THE EANl) OF GOSHEN Nay, I will live, take comfort as 1 may In this low land thy scorn liatli left to me, Wherein to sojourn till an hour be born Of Godhood and of home-return. No home Can there be luri' for me nor for my ( Joil ; Yea, only space for tarrying awhile : Yet were there lesser gods who here their home Hail made through countless ages ; here did dwell Worshippers somewise, Tharaoh's folk who call'd This deep dark earth and fertilizing flood Mother and father unto them. — Perchance riu' llesh-pots of the spirit here were full. loo AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY THE BUILDERS Ay, here is history not unlike thine Of high endeavor toward divinity Spoilt in an half-creation : this, of power Sans soul ; thy faith, of insight but not will. Yet thou, like these, conceivedst an altar-place Unto the most high God ; and like to these Didst build thee temples and adorn thee shrines Within the brain and heart and soul of me : That all was holy ; that the land had sung One cycle of praise and worship. Shalt thou let Thy temples turn sarcophagi } Yea, build we And cease : and are as these left by the way ? lol LOVE POHMS MOKATTAM I LOVE, 1 have sat and seen the sun go down On Ht^ypt, pyramid and minaret, Stark desert hills, green harvests and the mists Of epoch-ancient cities : all of one Gold glow ; and heard the noise of beast and man Ascending as though earth were new and had not Lived through her day and yearn 'd still unto night That, now descending, ends all. And 1 feel The meaning of those towers that crumble down Whilst calling still to heaven ; and of those tombs Of some dead man-god which are temples, yea, And shall be temples when these homes are not. 102 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY II FOR I have lived the sorrows and the shames Of some long mystery ; and in myself Been as the passing of a world of kings Through many sunsets. And am come to know The poignance of yon hearth-smoke that ascends In straight, thin air-shafts through the yellowing light Mixt with those voices. — And I am alone Weighing the wonder of a crumbling heaven And death abiding and the dust of things And misery : I alone, of these gaunt cliffs, Watching the sundown. It was night-time then With me and Egypt. — Was it morn with thee ? 103 LOVE POEMS THE PYRAMID **Thy shadow on these burning sands shall swing ** Noon, yea, and noon ; though all thou heldst of man " Shall long be dust. And, with the perishing " Of all he held immortal, shall the creed '* Which built thee to contain eternal life '* Lift from the world and leave thee nakedly ** An heap of stone." — And still my shadow, like This desert pile's, out on the desert leaps At morning, swings over the barren world Till evening lengthens it on homes of men In coolness. Yet the creed that built my soul Is lifted : and I lie before thee stone. I04 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY MEMPHIS My love was some vast city stretch 'd abroad Through league on league. And in me there did dwell Grandeur. And all the tribute of the world Was wholly mine. Mine early God was not As Egypt's lesser gods : but pure and fit To stand by Brahma at Jehovah's hand. Now there is nothing left of all that was. Only some sepulchres ; ay, and, 'tis said, Some image of the God that men have found And kept for chronicle. — And on the earth My bulk lies shatter 'd. And the desert birds Have made a station of mine ears and eyes. I05 LOVE POEMS PTAH Men have imagined gods. But God is dead. The substance of all gods is not as they, Creature of time and circumstance ; but His Impassibility is absolute. And therefore is the grave-cloth, not the crown, His symbol ; and His frame is emptiness. Love, we have sought through ages to attain A godship that is absolute as His, No creature : yet, no emptiness, but fill'd With world's totality : and named it Love. — I had attain'd and lived. But now my frame Is emptiness ; uncrown'd. And God is dead. lo6 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY THE SPHINX Sun hath turn'd no full cycle yet since Sphinx First gazed on flood and harvest. But the fruit Of earth is elsewhere garner'd than of yore. And the great sand encroaches. — I, too weak To work with world's late power, have lain me here 'Mid earlier peoples and a morning faith In every dawn's uprising : that with this Mild, pitying image I may yet ignore The pathos of the westering of the sun Through thousand ages : that, by length at last Of years, I be still watching when the dawn Breaks of a new earth and returning day. I07 LOVE POEMS THE NILE ** NOT with the tumult of a thousand tongues, " O Nile, but silently with serious pace ** And sympathy a thousandfold for earth ** And men and for the misery of things ! *' — So pray'd L And old Nile unto my need Hath made response. A thousandfold his flow Enfolds me. In his broad beneficence Seem suffering and misery foregone. And thou, like Nile, not as I mourn'd thee late, Movest : a quickening and fecundity Unto my barren being. And in me The glad seed blossoms ; and the land is green. lo8 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY LUXOR I LOVE, for, if all *soever of the world Must pass and yield place to the new that but By ruin of things old and in their fall Can build and flourish and be more than they (Making the dead best live, that only slept Till strength stirr'd o'er them) ; and these tottering halls Be now so tragic-splendid that the soul Seems smother'd by their very dust : how vast Must be the world built out of these, beyond Conception of endurance, place or mass, In time's unsculptured speech, those harmonies Which live by motion, yea, by perishing : I09 LOVE POEMS II AND thus are everlasting ! If my love Seem'd of such beauty that the whole heart faints With memory of some entablature, Some architrave or column crumbling down Out of the reaches of an infinite air — And earth is desolation : shall not I Allow the working of my soul ; and build As none have built before, not out of stone But mutability, of birth-in-death Absolved and reconciled — the absolute Art ? — I know not. Only, now the breath comes blind With dust and tears. For still something would bide. 110 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY THE TWO COLOSSI OF AMENOPHIS AT THEBES One had not sat and waited here so long Alone. But, thus companioned, it might be. — When dusk had come and all the night was dark And dreadful in its hoar decay ; and stars Were dimly distant : then had one alone Been fearful ; and the morning had not found Him vast nor steadfast. But, with two to feel A sympathy through earth's long night of things, Dawn seem'd not doubtful. And when dawn at last And sunsurge smote, yet no expected tone Gave sonorous response : then had one brow Melted. But two have still survived the shame. Ill LOVE POEMS NIGHT ALONG THE RIVER Tall palms athwart the lifting moon their plumes Sweep as in pale procession ; and beyond Gleams silver-gray the desert whose grim hills Move ever stilly and with sheen of some Broidery to the hem of Egypt's robe. — A cere-cloth and a pitiable show Of grandeur as the ruin'd tinsel round Some stark sarcophagus ? Some corpse of love Trick'd out in ornament to wear thy name Yet crumble at the first lift of the lid And fall to powder at a finger's stroke ? Say, rather, fresh strength stirring : though one love. 112 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY DAWN AT ASSOUAN FOR is not Egypt wakening anew Wliilst none less Egypt ? If no longer dead And buried 'neath the ruins of her strength But builded o'er them otherwise than they, Yet none less Nile's own nation stretch 'd afield Green to the sun and flourishing as when 'T was Pharaoh's granary ? — If recent hands Would alter and by altering revive The spent vitality, shall I then shrink From any least enlightening, for the fear Dawn were not thine : as day, night, both have been ? Life, if but life, were Egypt's : more than death. 113 LOVE POEMS PHIL>E Yea, here is something of magnificence Which hath been ; which shall never again be As it hath been ; and which our very zeal To foster and preserve hath made un worth Men's admiration. Liefer, let it lie Lovely beneath the fertilizing flood A sacrifice to new civilities ; Than worse than waste our labor, spoiling all The beauty as the tragic offering. The benefit and vicarage alike ! — Were yet yon temple even I myself. None other ; would I spurn thy fostering ? 114 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY ABU SIMBEL 1 Out of the sullen stone thou carvedst me An heart, and madest it magnificent With sculptured imagery, that all my walls Had borne thy features. And beneath my roof Even in the midst of me the vault was held, Yea, by thy form and person splendidly Hewn of my living substance. And my gates Were guardian'd round by thee, thee mountain-huge And heaven-like exalted, that the world Of mountain and of heaven's high vault might know Who builded him and who was this man's soul. — Yet came the sand and choked all utterly. 115 LOVE POEMS II And after may come searchers who have seen Some crown obtruding or a sacred brow Unburied by some chance swirl of the gale And rearing marvelous, inexplicable Out from the driven desertness and death To mock with wonder. And perchance their toil Shall find the splendor of thy person still, Though worn and shatter'd with the centuries. Sufficiently denoting what was once Of vast religion and eternal faith. And they shall see where the last line broke off. And share thy cenotaph with bats and owls. 116 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY KHARTOUM Ay, love, for what avails sincerity If earth hath other truth none less sincere Which, overpowerful, must twist and thwart My singleness of purpose to some snarl Of falsity ? That here a noblest life Went down in darkness and distrust, but that, With peace at heart, he held perforce a sword ; With war in every purpose, yet pursued Conciliation : such must give us pause ! What were my love when met with truth none less Sincere of unlove, than a hate at heart ; As hate profess'd, other than love for thee ? 117 LOVE POEMS OMDURMAN Thus in these uttermost antipodes Hath throed and sprung through fiercest tragedy, Through writhings of the heart implacable, The new truth : how the final service God Hath ask'd, were just — death ; though the world deny And call religion madness. Should I hate Hard as I love thee, be not much amazed At the apostacy — 't were death to me ! Which thou, as now I understand thy will, Demandest : leaving me to lie and bleach Bone-white beneath the sun, scorch'd on this sand. So in my desertness I still live love. 118 AN EGYPTIAN JOURNEY THE DESCENT TO THE SEA So in my desertness I need thee still ! Though the white eastering waves shall pour and pour Over and past and on beneath, whilst soul And foresight, will and all intelligence Are firm to the one purpose to resume World's interrupted labor and defy Their ruin that is in me — all is thou. Thou, these gods' fall ; and thou, time's pulse and tread That plants its onward foot upon their neck League after league : and thou at last the goal Of desperate persistence godlessly. Egypt, mine Egypt, only hath been thou. 119 LOVE POEMS EXODUS ** Therefore, not thou canst cure me of myself, " Egypt ! scarce thou ; nor yet thy swarth Soudan ** Beyond thee fervid, tragic equally ! ** Not hundred-hued sweet Thebes, with morning and ** With evening in her temples and her fields, ** Opal and emerald and gold, can free me. *' And if not thou, great Egypt ! then what else '' That earth hath of the living or the dead ?" For I am not as I would other men May be : full meekly to revere (nor crave) Thy beauty and thy wonder and thy might. I leave thee as I came. For I am I. 120 PALESTINE UN VISITED PALESTINE UNVISITED I Because the vivid West with thy wan soul Is bound and burden 'd ; and the year of love Is past with that short season of thy faith ; And, though thou breath 'st, yet that thou livest not Save in an outward semblance : therefore toward An East long dead and moveless, breathless, lost Out of all motion of earth's outward year, I with my faith, my soul, at latency Yearn marvelously, ay, mysterious-wise : Seeking some vital substance. Where the world Hath been but is not, haply there the soul Liveth ; and r^compenseth living faith. I23 LOVE POEMS II Were the hope wanton ? — I had thought to find, Here where thy masterful rich womanhood Dwelleth at compact with a world of power, The absolute completion. When my love And joy in thee made harmony of all ; And strength seem'd autovital : then thought I : Though earth might pass, fulfilling so earth's self By death, yet faith that had upbuilt the world Were everlasting : and our life therewith. — Now shall 1 deem the syllogism strain 'd ; And love, as earth, fulfilling self by death .? Or might I hope my love, love not enow ? I24 PALESTINE UNVISITED III The worship had seem'd sacred utterly ; The faith, redemption ; and the sacrifice, Foreseen and almost as with fortitude Accepted, seal'd or so had seem'd to seal The consecration. And though earth were dead, Dream'd I, religion, heart's criterion Of life or death, were not a thing to die. — Now were criterion of life or death Itself death's subject ? Might oblivion Lay hold on that intelligence wherethrough Alone might any memory have end ? Or were religion not of me and thee ? I25 LOVE POEMS IV Our love had seem'd so much religion-like That when the first inevitable loss Of faith ertsued upon the death of thine, Then I with incommended subtlety Deduced full analogue with love's old tale Of One ; and of the endurance for awhile Of faith in Him ; but now even as His world Were dead in the East, so that the faith of Him Had likewise perish 'd. Thus 1 bitterly Denied my better insight that had been ; And yielded to an imagery obtain 'd Not of His message : but of earlier gods. 126 PALESTINE UNVISITED FOR to a land of old fatuity ; Of half-forgotten fetters ; of strange faiths And mystic fantasies of monstrous forms Half worse-than-human ; and of wrecks of these I fled ; where every feature of the earth Might picture ruin as it was in me : So to escape thy world, thy mockery Of strength unquenchable. And there I found A faith gone-under and an ancient soul So dead 'twas marvel it seem'd once alive. And so I sought to feel the death of faith An incident and instance of all things. I27 LOVE POEMS VI Somewhat there was, I call'd in that dark hour The spirit still of thee, that would not die. Someway such antique land, though desert-dread And worthless of a resurrection, told Thy story over and over as I gazed. I call'd it lingering faith within my dream Of thee and came away with on my lips : ** Egypt, mine Egypt, only hath been thou " — Blaspheming, as I know. Though thou wast dead In me, there rose even from those soulless stones A soul ; an insight of a valent faith That was in them : for all its falsity. 128 PALESTINE UNVISITED VII A FAITH that so, despite its falsity Of hewn enormities, of life trod down To stifling in death's effort to endure Without end by material monument, Was infinite, forever working on Into the living faiths that since have been ; And ended not with crumbling of its tombs. A faith that therefore and therein alone Was somewhat still beyond m.y faith in thee And buoy'd me up and led me on to know There might be life without thee : not without Divinity. Thou, not my soul, wast dead. I29 LOVE POEMS VIII And thus that thou in soul and all with thee Of thine onworking West are to my spirit Dead ; and there lie beyond the morning lands Of desolate stagnation : following on The hint old Pharaoh's stagnancy hath given I journey. And my journeying shall find An holy place in desolation, though Long desolate yet holy. And a faith I once deem'd dead with its own sacrifice Shall haply surge again. And in its life Shall faith in thee, religion-wise, renew The soul lost out of labor : and we live. — 130 PALESTINE UNVISITED IX FOR nothing is there here that hath endured Of tomb nor monument ; nor sought to stay. If Egypt wastes her substance to endure And deems destruction and the desperate change A death, what hope were, in a world of change, That Egypt, save in some vague grief alone, Should be an influence to later years ? What hope were, mine Egyptian, that thy change Should seem in me less than an utter death By desperate destruction ; thou alive Save as renunciation ? — Someway here The sacrifice seems consonant with strength. 131 LOVE POEMS Here is no effort against onwardness, No hint of horror at self-sacrifice Even to obliteration. Here the past Lives by its willingness, yea, zest to move Outward and still beyond, absorbing all Of future' wonder by desertion quite Of first scenes and the primal face of faith. Nay, hath the loss seem'd His but to those hearts Which will not waken to wax onward still, Which yearn at some stability untoward Of creed and custom in our fluxioning : Missing the self-stability of Him ? 132 PALESTINE UNVISITED XI For the world wakens in these latter days As it hath waken'd alway ; and it seems As though the wonder-workings of the age Were incompatible with what hath been : And Christ were grown archaic. And there bide Reactionaries who with coward cant Apologize for heaven and doubt the fact Of earth ; contending 'gainst the crude half-cult Of earth-for-earth-alone. But there are ways Beyond the ken of either disputant To reconcile antinomies : denying Nought save their need that truth be dual-whole. 133 LOVE POEMS XII Ay, we have fought, we even Christ's followers, Through darkened ages of a dual truth : One law for earth that leaveth Christ behind And one for Christ His kingdom altering not Nor suffering adaptation. But we miss Still the true view by few if fit attain 'd : How, by the absolute relinquishment Of every creed and tenet to receive Each fragment of the new-won basketful. Thereby and thus alone the scrap becomes Full feast and faith is science-justified. Here, love, if love be, shall the faith be won. 134 PALESTINE UNVISITED XIII What merit in denying that we know For sake of somewhat which, as truths now prove, We know in error ? Why pretend our place Of Palestine were earthly Paradise, And Christ the God-on-earth seen yesterday ? Why pretend that my faith in thee now past Endureth ? — Yet there 's somewhat in the passing Of faith, of Christhood, of an holy place Which waxeth aye ! How were a present age Itself and present ; how were any truth Self-comparable with error : could the world ** Be as though yesterday had never been " ? 135 LOVE POEMS XIV Therefore assume through every change of truth The viewpoint, not of him that must deny, But of the faith for which denial stands. Therefore abjure not of a God-on-earth Nor holiness in mere geodesy, Till that for once we have assumed the place Of Christhood in ourselves ; and, being assured. Ay, of the fact that faith in Self hath been. Discern what 's presupposed unto all time — Now, as to past — by virtue of that Now Which is of all-time ; what 's supposed of truth Even by denial, yea, by " love pass'd-by.*' 136 PALESTINE UNVISITED XV For we may err by too close subtlety Of literal analysis, may find I never loved : because the love I now Conceive, interpret and would seek expound Shows loftier with a novel synthesis. Yet were the virtue of the new conceit Mere affectation were it not attain 'd Through ** writhings of the spirit implacable/' Our science-world were wanton as the Greek Had we not come through ages iron-bound Of Schoolmen torturing to the last resort The logic antedating their own Christ. 137 LOVE POEMS XVI The logic therefore failing before Him. If by too wide reaction men have swerved On one hand to denying any rule Of reasoning and maintain in face of facts Empirical continuance of His word ; Or counterfalsely deem the lore of facts Sufficient to intelligence nor heed Warning of what a will accomplishes : Error and counter-error were not His. His was a feeling for the faith in facts, The fact of faith. — Shall a new logic-law Interpret what love spake in parable ? 138 PALESTINE UNVISITED XVII But someway we imagine still, with lore Of ancient Aristotle platonizing, How either were each item isolate And self atomic, else the actual flux From item unto item finds its stand In superimposed conservatism of type ; Self still atomic save as generalized And merged. We deem our Christ, our love, our faith Rather a passing point illuminate Somewise by some unaltering source of sight Nowise within us save as each were all : I, thou but by commingling in desire. 139 LOVE POEMS XYIII Now that communion is an unreal aim, Even as Christ a man who truly died ; And that there is no fact throughout all earth Indifferently another nor facts all By any subterfuge : hath love an end ? Hath Christ as Christ ceased to have been Himself ? — Lurks there one truth in all our waste of facts Half -realized, it were : that the fact not-now, If utterly distinctively at end And nevermore to be confused with fact Of any present, thus imperishably Lives in the life its death serves to define. I40 PALESTINE UNVISITED XIX The world 's alive but with the paradox Of multiple identity conserved Even by the passing and the change from it. Self were not one ; nor any truth of fact Were estimable : save the world beyond By no confusion nor no merging with it, But by inexorable otherness Through every alteration, still defined The alterative entity as whole. Such for our insight of these latter days Half-utter'd, half-foreshadow'd. — Not some Love, But my lost love lives in denying it. I4I LOVE POEMS XX Love, mark the revolution. Science sneers : ** The isolation is a given surd. ** How, what the resolution, save by type, ** We care not." And the churches stupidly Retort : " Eternal verity is one. " We see not any seeming parodox ** To solve." So each in some agnosticism Evades the opportunity. Christ said : ** I, who am I and thus no other man, ** Imply men all ; that they are whole by me.' But neither of our wisdoms speaks as His ; For both are scribes without authority. I42 PALESTINE UNVISITED XXI Recorders both : that from fresh tablets-trove ; This, of old oracle ! — yea, neither dark Self-utterance attaining. And the screed, Their record of earth-nature as of God, Hath need of author. But one scribe hath fail'd To foist upon the earth an arbiter ; And one discredits thought's necessity : Mis-reasoning of a world which point by point Conceiveth of itself in every point Self- revelation. — Shall we but record. Copyists merely ; or, by utterance Original, reconcile self and world ? 143 LOVE POEMS XXII And note the blindness. As I pray'd and yearn'd " Thou shall I be : and thou shalt be my peace ! " So scoff they both ; the church, the science each Predicting absolution : that, ** In God " ; This, " In the void of cosmic negligence." It matters little ; for the goal were nought, The satisfaction of amalgamance A self-destruction. He had better sight : ** Because of this my separateness unique, ** Define I all ; am therefore whole by them." — How have men shrunk from self-interpreting The utterance ! How, wanted to be One ! 144 PALESTINE UNVISITED XXIIl This then is love : to stand beside the world A selfhood segregate ; and, thus because A thing unique, not substituting for Some joy or pain of any, therefore whole — Not part of any though defining each — A joy, a pain conclusive of theirs all ; A sacrifice beyond vicarious Atonement, self-creating a world lost To learn and thus to save it : in oneself To prove divinity to every time. And therefore were the cosmos or the God Vacant alike in their fatuity. 145 LOVE POEMS XXIV Such the (irst step, lovr, in reconstituting The vividness of Christ as of my love. To take upon nie, as tiie sins of the world Even for redemption by acknowledgment, The virtue of the loss, the passing-by Of Christ's own story, of thy woman's faith (If faith) ; denying nowise of the world The absoluteness of the dtath of it, Nor value of death's subject. So 1 turn My soul to feel the vividness of His Long-past atonement ; fill my heart with it As not-mine : and redeem thereby my world. 146 PALESTINE UNVISITED XXV But no solipsism, no declaring self Alive with love that hath no other-self ; No personal divinity without The worth of a world created and maintain'd In work ! And therefore with the hope to prove Thee vivid and the speech made half-divine As not since Egypt and a faith disrupt, I hitherward have turn'd ; avowing all The passing desolation ; yet in change. The desertness and insignificance Of this waste country, claiming for the Christ Fulfilment of a world-divinity. 147 LOVE POEMS XXVI As Christ conceived it, palpably the faith Was parable, no clear-cut logic-term Defining beyond cavil ? Yet I think The phrase was for the world, as this for thee ; And fitted not too closely to a truth Of individual divinity The world had misinterpreted straightway ! Howbeit, such the truth I take of Him, And such the resolution : to obtain Ability to work in and for thee By virtue of the passing of my faith And passing of faith's longing to endure. 148 PALESTINE UNVISITED XXVIl No mergence, no community ; save as The love-totality of faith in self To reinterpret and to save a world Touches thee and is touchstone of thine own. No isolation as in latter days, More than the mergence of that past desire ; But definition of thy vivid soul Not dead, by reference through every act To thine activity. That so thy West Of onward-working proves compatible With life in the spirit : and the world is well. No Palestinian wanness : save renew'd. I49 LOVE POEMS XXVIII The world works on. V^e are not left behind Like Egypt, like the love of yesterday Nor that false phantom of the shallow creeds Who died " but to endure." For we endure Even by entering in and working through New tragedies, new desperateness day By day, with fresh assurance of a will To feel an universe and, feeling earth, Earn wholeness in the unique estimate Soul puts upon it as soul's act of faith. This be the meaning of mine estimate Created in me of an East now dead. I50 PALESTINE UNVISITED XXIX Did not I write, then when our faith was new And love was victory, and Christ did live, And life was as religion ; sang I not ** Beloved, and Mary meets thee on the hills " ? How otherwise the world ! And through what toils Of counter-dispensation are we come : In image of this tale and tragedy Of Christendom ! But now the phrase anew Hath meaning. Mary greets thee as her Son Not living, nay, nor dead ; but risen from The sepulchre of ages when the world Look'd to His second coming : unaware. I5I A MOURNING FOR DEATH A MOURNING FOR DEATH 1 I SANG ; when last the chill frost overlaid All passionate earth, and forest fastnesses Were steel-stiff, and the world's rigidity Wrought in me ; then I sang, as one o'erlaid With sepulchring white snow and stiffen 'd as The forest-iron beyond sufferance : Awaiting then a springtime and a sun Which, surging, show'd my seeds a barrenness ; Proved death — the death of him adored as thou ■ For truth of earth's return to quickening. And thou wast so estranged I deem'd thee dead Though near me. — Now these songs I send afar. ^55 LOVE POEMS II BELOVfiD, I could not latterly abide Earth's two-fold tragedy. Bereavement seem'd Too utterly, intolerably the truth Of every feature of my soul and world ! Wherefore, since he was not attainable Who in default of any fathering God Had been eternal Father unto me, To thee I turn'd — pardon the hope forlorn ! — Who wert attainable : and found my dead In so far forth as thou wast of the dead Alive as formerly. And now I bear Only the death and suffering of him. 156 A MOURNING FOR DEATH III T WERE still a grief sufficient to a soul, Amply intolerable : as my breath Bore witness when it fail'd then at the first. But now relieved, enlighten 'd by the life Thy soul's resuscitation showeth me. — I cannot pander to .the creeds profess 'd Of faith in future resurrection known For fact impossible. I cannot lie In face of truth and try pretend belief In any mere continuance of his spirit Now nor at any moment after death Hath been. But I may learn of life through thee. 157 LOVE POEMS IV FOR first let me accept the fact of death Such as it still most surely seems to be : That now he is not anywhere about, Dwelling nor being with me ; but that somewhat Which once was he though now is nowise of him Lies somewhere placed apart, haply lest we Might ever know and craze our hearts with it. Twere sweeter to consign unto the fire Of purification such sad carrion. But, as the fact is, this I know of death In plain recital. — I had thought of thee Not as the same : though parted as by death. 158 A MOURNING FOR DEATH And therein, by the seeming severance Unalterable and intolerable, Had lain the application unto thee Of death's, which buried as the dead thy name. And now 1 learn the seeming severance Yet revocable ; and the parallel A falsifying of the fact of thee. And thou wilt be about, and share my store Of casual converse ; that we meet and part To meet again : so wholly unlike death. And only somewhat not felt of the dead Debars from fullest life, suggests death still. 159 LOVE POEMS VI That somewhat wanting to our fullest life I need not tell thee now nor make my prayer. I wait thee : as I could not wait the dead Who change not, wax not as thy soul shall grow. I pass the poor complaint and take of thee With infinite exaltation that thou givest — The opportunity to do thee praise In speech and upright living by thy grace Unto the end (may I not fall from thee !). The possibility to purge my soul Of its untoward rebellion, facing death And finding in it this, yet lack'd of thee. l6o A MOURNING FOR DEATH VII AND finding, in bereavement which abides, Life's very fulness which thy life suggests As formerly, though even as latterly Denies as from some sepulchre. For, whilst By lovelessness in thee I held thee dead, How might my spirit in the fact of death Detect establishment of deathless love ? But, now thou art alive as formerly (No dream of death), thus even thy lovelessness Relieves death of the burthen ; leaveth love Rejoicing in its dead as not in life : Raiseth the dead to life unendingly. 161 LOVE POEMS VIII FOR now I mind me of the facts of death With new interpretation : how these years Of dispossession and of desolateness Are not the years of hirn who lieth dead. Are not the hours of him ; who last did live With very love of me upon his lips ; For whom no aeons of a loneliness Weaken one worth of that companionship Which fill'd and held — not (as I feel) his last, But — his eternally fulfilling days Of soulship and of worldhood. For the Now Of Self may cease not : though it be not now. 162 A MOURNING FOR DEATH IX Thus by the grace of thy resuscitance And by the gratitude I owe to thee Abides the presence and the life of him Even in the wisdom now at length vouchsafed. Him have I with me as I held him then Beyond the power of any death to take, His love and his death equally alive : A source of strength and insight as of joy Through all-time, solace of the lonely years. And when at last thy love affordeth me Fulness of life, shall any love be lost Because death also hath its victories ? 163 LOVE POEMS X Beloved, for the lovelessness of thee, Though teaching love's affinity to death, Involves no implication that our life Is life the more by seeming lack of love. Nay, rather, if thy least resuscitance Hath power to prove love deepliest for the truth Of that which otherwise were emptiness (Turning the void to some fulfilment still) How mightily by this am I confirm 'd In primal faith : how, bringing to thee all That life or death alike in me provide, I meet in thee the world that was my soul 1 I64 A MOURNING FOR DEATH XI Wherefore is no bereavement recently. Wherefore is every blustering of this bleak And savage season an assurance (through The opportunity to combat strength With strength, to enter in and be as one With these wild boreal tempests) an assurance Of reciprocity in strength with thee, Prophecy of thy soul's upsurging spring To reconcile and quicken when thou comest. Therefore I send unto thy living heart These seeds from out my love-fill'd sepulchre Not barren, nay, nor sleeping : only, dead. 165 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN 1 Beneath these swales of white forgetfulness The Lofty Bad-Lands In blank monotony yet beautiful (Wherethrough my spirit passes that it sing) Lieth another beauty not of them Save in its breadth monotonous of harsh Insistent savagery. These wastes of schist Half-cover'd crystal clean must here and yon Still thrust to outcrop where the storm was wild That overlaid them, and the grief severe That tortured them to their rough imagery Of tragic waters in unceasing pain. These stones oppress me still for all their snow. I69 LOVE POEMS II The East in pQR I havc been a dweller by that sea Retrospect Whose wintry breath is as a flail of frost To beat upon the body and the soul Of him who breatheth it. And all its strength Is leaden, burdening the heart of him To desperation who doth strive thereby And take unto himself the shock and roar Which poureth from it. Such the Atlantic is And such am I, even as the spume-scour 'd rock That shuddering seethes to sanded nothingness. Thou being as ocean, I must put between A continent to dare behold the sea. I70 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN III IT were not I would wilfully neglect The journey's •^ *=■ Warrant Thee and thy truth's inexorability ; Nor wholly that thy truth imposed through mine Is tyranny beyond my power to bear. But empty art thou of the life my soul Must live if anywise be life to me : That with some pitiful pretence of life (Love's multitudinous delight in earth) Forbidden to my spirit must I my sight Delude and cheat with shows of passing things. The panorama of thine ocean spread Did lead me desertward but yesteryear. 17! LOVE POEMS IV The Undertaking /^^^ dcscrtward maybe lead me once more These oceanic billowings of scene Even as formerly. And I yet sick Return to take my mockery of life Once again unto me : and be as now. But, though the worst be, no oblivion Can cure the sickness that the spirit knows. Therefore be unforgot beneath this shroud The desolation and the fruitlessness Which soul can garner but by soul alone In intimate possession : yea, the death Forever in me though I live — as thou ! I72 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN Ay, between thee and that far shore of strength '^^^ ^^^^""^ '" Expectation Whereto my journey beareth stretch wide sands Unshrouded, naked of a covering scar Where loss and isolation alone bide Sublime by self-acknowledgment. And there Shall snow be seen a source of cosmic fact, An implication of the grief below ; No lethe, but sealing at worst earth's cirque. Rendering self-sufficient unto earth Each place of earth's purgation. In such art As nature makes of aimlessness beyond Self-imposed process shall the sight take truth. 173 LOVE POEMS VI The Continen- tal Parting of the Ways And by that truth sense soul's new wakening. For even now the rivers of the east No longer turn their slow streams unto thee. But here be torrents which in some serene Southwestward ocean after tortuous course Shall find completion and a quick rebirth. Though fires had barr'd them yet a mightiest gorge Is of their rupturing and their route their own. Like to those waters now released from thee, Descending from the hills I find outspread Still but an image of my nakedness. And lesser waters all are lost in it. 174 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN VII Here is that vast plain wherearound my soul "^^^ ^'"^^^ ^*^* ^ -^ Basin Rears passionately towering, shuddering from Its acrid desolation. Cities stand About the outskirts of its desertness Fair at my feet ; but all its pasturage Is penance and the heart of it is full Of sourest brine causing, not quenching, thirst. From every altitude that is my soul Ice as the sweat of my stark agony Sweeps down to mingle with that bitterness. That wide wan mockery my soul surrounds Wholly : no drop shall ever reach a sea. 175 LOVE POEMS VIII Its Geodetic yet but that vcrv bitterness* of death, Destiny "^ This dreg-remains of my dread sacrament, Is proof of intimate process where my soul Hath purge if drop by drop and sweat by sweat Of somewhat which must yet be purged of me. Haply in course of ages even my snow, My crown of still attempting the great truth, Shall melt from my diminishment and then Only deintegration tell that once Was something that aspired : and I attain By surcease of the struggle ; yea, liberate These waters as I wholly die with them. 176 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN IX Though there be some who with a patient thrift (Those citizens whose labor looks so fair) Are husbandmen of these my frost-fed streams To turn into a garden each his place With daily watering : and thus my tears Are taught some present purpose. But at last Must the flow foul and dwindle and those few Who trust the hills about them be betray 'd. — Still is there one who as mine head sinks low And lower saith : ** What fume the sun sucks up Collected of thy chrism shall more and more Pass o'er thee and its longing be appeased." And also its Mystery 177 LOVE POEMS And Desire J DOUBT mc Hot that whcn thcsc hills were new They were as I, creatures who took their care Of this life-chance within them for some space To further, by experience of light And air, the natural increase of faith Under the sun. And as the heart within Their early-aging circumspect grew stale No adventitious outlet to their orb Relieved the self -suffusion. As my soul Became they this intensive tragedy Indifferent to earth's life beyond their death. But in this hope of death become they whole. 178 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN XI An hope of death here seemingly achieved By every sign of charnel-bleaching earth. A corpse below and in the sky above The piercing poison that put out its life By too much passion, not enough of peace. This then is peace, the hope and help held out Of modern insight, of all earth to-day As man would make it. — Is no earth of God Discoverable, shall no ocean be Salvation whence we come and whither go ? Behold a beauty to itself alone : 'Twere somewhat. Is there anything beyond? The American Desert I79 LOVE POEMS XII Its Fact of Perchance where southward far that stream pursues Failure Its wonderwork amid the insensate stones (That stream whereof the power is all its own And springeth from the source and is not fed By any other streams save streams as strong To sculpture out a world as is itself : Not by the world about it !), there perchance Where somewhat nobler, richer than the dream Of oceanic mingled mystery. — I wot not yet. The desert here doth cry For ocean and shall not be satisfied. Desiring bread hath earth brought forth a stone. l8o A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN XIH ASSUREDLY not in a desert death ^"? Mystical Redemption Is read the lesson of the life of things. If seemingly a circuit closed and done Without resumption, yet suggestive still Of yearning toward an ocean but beyond. And if the destitution be aware By self-acknowledgment (as, save self-shamed, Were desertness a fair fertility) Must ocean be concluded of these stones In sensible presence ; and yon barriers That westward rear nigh insurmountable Inspire but soul's best effort to surpass. 181 LOVE POEMS XIV The Snowy lq ! foF thc conqucst shall exhibit fields Range Of full fertility for patent fact ; The weathering of the cycle of the streams For absolution : if mysterious still By abnegation, yet by rich access Of multitudinous fecundity Thereby proved universal every stone ; And desertness no limitation but Some end and aim in virtue of itself. — Thus in the paths of earlier conquerors To force the achievement and be free at last Of the immediate system of the sea ! 182 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN XV All earth would sing. — But there is much of blame Pf,^^"*''^* ^ Californian To pardon in those earlier conquerors vaiieys Ere paradise be wholly here approved. Blood-stains of conquest, rage to rifle earth Of earth's worst bane or bounty, scoring all With plague-pits of past desertness anew. Nor hath men's exploitation of the fields Been pure of tyranny and toils of shame. The grief is here which ever bides with men Of concupiscence. May the unlusting hills Which hymn the high Pacific yet teach men's hearts J The harvesting and garnering of soul. I83 LOVE POEMS XVI The Country BEHOLD, for thcrc hath been a chronicle of the Spanish . Fathers Of lofticst effort after singleness Of spirit to the benefit of men By stern self-abnegation. And the tale Soothes the vex'd soul in its contemplating. In that old history the earth and air, The hills and the quick streams do all conspire With ocean to the consecrating of The human purpose and are proof of it. The sense, of desolation as of thee Is lifted from my spirit ; as thus I take Religion of the loss, learn'd of these hills. I84 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN XVII Their Fair Here was the spirit of the conquerors ^ ^ South Coast Not too much stain'd with conquest. Here that rage To ransack earth seized not upon men's souls. Nor modernly hath stark oppression mark'd The working of new highways to the world : As where with wheat are flesh and blood thresh 'd out To glut the seven-fold monster. But these vales Harbor their people ; with the sea before, The serious hills behind to be their hearth And heaven to roof them. While above their fields Stand towers, not towers of conquest, but the home Of harvesters and vineyarders of men. 185 LOVE POEMS XVIII Its Missions FOR pious pricsts have toil'd along this land With book and bell, with solemn forest-cross To yield salvation ; and have suffer'd some Their crowning martyrdom ; and some have pass'd Full of the ripe years laden low with souls. And there be those who still at cheerful tilth Bear the brown robe and greet their ground with prayer. A creed is in these mountains ; and along This shore lies wondering many a mystic isle Where fragments of the hills, having stepp'd down, Receive a baptism each of its own cloud Upgather'd and descending as a dove. 186 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN XIX Day by day, yea, along this sun-steep'd coast As over every isle of omen'd blue Riseth the sea-wind softly and upon The flanks and features of these hills uncouth Maketh a cloud to crown and cover them. The brute-like breast, the gaunt, bough-bearing brow That unregenerate rear unashamed At heaven, lie hooded and their ridge engown'd. And o'er their limbs these peaks initiate Receive the oil and ichor coursing down In sacramental secrecy to brim The one wide holy basin bathing all. And its Mountains I87 LOVE POEMS XX The Mountains' ] HAVE asccnded as these rains descend Metaphor To feel the absolution : and have seen. — The flood beneath that by infiniteness Symbols the wholeness of the acknowledged soul ; Ocean beneath in far tranquillity. And neighboring the strand those emerald swales Which are the first and best of human works, Field-gardens in their young fecundity. And, round about me, strugglings as of some Effort to lift as earth shall lift no more. But over all, brooding and crowning near, That consolation cloud-born of the sea. 188 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN XXI Thus, thus shall all earth's struggling then attain : And its inter- pretation By consecration to the accepted cup. Thus soul's (Reintegration (felt and fear'd In former song and by that earlier song As death accepted) were shown sacred yet. — The rains descend. I as those barren buttes Of yesterday am wash'd into the sand A desertness ; but as these hills to-day Should take some splendor by the tragic truth, Some sense of self-repletion. " From the sea, " So back unto the sea : " were void ; save for Such storm-hewn steeps to shrink and suffer still. 189 LOVE POEMS XXII Their Time of ^ SEASON comcth in cach rounded year Emptiness When clouds are wanting and the relentless sky Sucks up no moisture save from earth alone. The vineyards wither and the fields of tilth Are shriveird every one unto a scar To tell of passions, burnings that have been But are not in those days of afterdeath. Myself was but some scar of afterdeath. Some cicatrice where passion onetime was ; But as the reawakening of these hills To cloud-crown 'd tragedy I too shall grow Couraged to suffer comprehendingly. I90 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN XXIIl The barren spirit of the conquerors '^**"*" '****=* Perchance was in me — them whose only aim Was fierce possession. Surely was I one Who fain had ransack'd earth and heaven to know The treasure of thine heart nor leave it whole. Oppression was there, mine own bone and blood Forced to the wine-press to be worthier thee By unremittent labor. Even have I Fled from an ocean, from thine absoluteness To save a self. — But now these wrongs are past. I pray by the Pacific and serve his flood With offering of my song drawn of his streams. I9I LOVE POEMS XXIV The Same YEARS may rctum when yet myself a flood ; Fill'd with the strange swift strength of serving thee (Though nowise merged sea-wasted in thy soul) Shall hew awide, as almost erst, a course Through desertness indifferent : we being thus Creative-sculpturing as that rich stream South westward ly wreaking on self surprised Its powerful purpose to be perfect god. Time was when prospect of such power of heart Had seem'd a peace passing this present peace Less nobly vouchsafed. But herein I hymn Content this dream that passeth only death. I92 A JOURNEY FROM OCEAN TO OCEAN XXV Never anew the fear, the dread fatigue ^l^^^s^m ' *= The Same Of meeting thee upon that marge of self Where land and life with agony have end. Never anew absorption 'neath thy deeps. But acclamation of the private loss (Thus absolute, conclusive of thy truth !) Unending in this difference of heart 'Twixt earth and flood, my sufferance and thee. Thy surge descends, thy strong denial thrills The storm-wrought stone, the strain'd experience That rears at outlook o'er thine infinite. I rise, new-bathed, a continent, from thee. THE END Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton b* Co. Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. •DEC 21 1903